Murphy: I was like a brick that sweat just a tiny little bit out of its eyes from time to time. Sarah was a brick that had been dumped in the ocean and had taken on all of the water and had been wrung out at the table read. You were an adorable, sweet, sentimental mess. And I was inside. It was all there. I was just holding it in to piss Dan off.
Levy: That’s really what he wanted, for us to all cry—
Murphy: Crumble like him.
Levy: —which I gave into.
Murphy: I think that the scene where we find out that Twyla has been sitting on bazillions of dollars for all of these years is so triumphant and made me fall in love with Twyla even more.
Let’s be honest, Twyla has helped Alexis much more than Alexis has helped Twyla. They’ve become such dear friends, and I genuinely think that Twyla is Alexis’s best friend. So I think that the way they got to say goodbye to each other was written so beautifully, was so perfect for both characters. That was a really weepy day.
Levy: Alexis has always seemingly had more power over Twyla because she was just this sweet girl in a cafe, but at the very end you really see this nice equality between the two of them. Both of them acknowledge what they’ve brought to each other’s lives and the relationship they want to have moving forward.
Sarah, during the episode Twyla had the line: “Being here, getting to hear your stories over the past few years, even the scary ones, that made me smile.” How has it been watching your brother and father create this series? Is it like that?
Levy: It has been extremely emotional. It’s not only a journey that I’ve been on and we’ve been on as a cast, coming together and getting to know one another so well, but having seen this from beginning to end…. I remember when Daniel was coming over to my parents’ house and they were writing the pilot presentation, when it was just the idea. To see it go from that to this, seemingly in the blink of an eye—so much has happened, but it feels like it all happened so fast.
Saying goodbye to that after this year is going to be hell. I’ve been feeling it even now, not being able to see my dad and my brother on a regular basis has been weird. I’m just so used to seeing them. It’s been a very strange experience, unlike anything I’ve ever had.
Okay, time to get serious. How much money did Alexis turn down from Twyla?
Levy: [Laughs.] You tell it! I’m going to fuck it up. I think the check that I was given to give Alexis was…what was it? Like…was it, like, 50?
Murphy: I was going to say $25,000.
Levy: I think it was like $50,000. I was like, “$50,000? This girl has won like millions and millions of dollars!”
Murphy: When we got to set and Sarah was given the prop, she actually took it, looked at it, and was like, “What the fuck? This is bullshit.” She was so aggressively angry about the amount that Twyla chose to give away.
Levy: It just defeated the whole purpose of the generous gift!
